Dwight Stirling

Dwight Stirling is the founder and chief executive officer of the Center for Law and Military Policy, a think tank dedicated to strengthening the legal protections of those who serve the nation in uniform. Stirling is also a reserve JAG officer in the California National Guard and co-founder of Veterans Legal Institute.

Stirling has received national recognition for his scholarship on the National Guard and the Feres Doctrine. His article in a University Texas journal about the legal structure of the National Guard is the leading academic piece on the subject, an article entitled, “With All Due Respect, Mr. President, We’re Not Going to Follow that Order: How and Why States Decide Which Federal Military Rules Apply to State National Guard Personnel.” His article “The Feres Doctrine and Accountability” was recently published by the Journal of Law, Policy, and Military Affairs, one of the articles he has written about the judicial policy that bars service members from filing tort suits.

Stirling was an active duty JAG officer from 2007 to 2014. He was the California National Guard’s senior prosecutor for many years and has tried more state courts-martial than any JAG officer in California’s history. Stirling’s commitment to the country and its service members began in December of 2001, when he joined the Army National Guard shortly after the terrorist attacks of September 11. He was commissioned from California’s reserve Officer Candidate School as an Armor officer in 2004, becoming a JAG officer the following year to utilize his law degree.

In 2009, Stirling was deployed to the Balkans with the Kosovo Force (KFOR), a NATO-led international peacekeeping force responsible for preventing recurrences of ethnic cleansing in the volatile southern region of Serbia. He served as chief of military justice on the mission, working under Major General (Retired) Keith D. Jones.

At present, Stirling chairs the Orange County Bar Association’s Veterans and Military Committee. He also teaches criminal justice at Columbia College of Missouri’s Los Alamitos campus. He has received numerous military awards, including the Meritorious Service Medal and the Army Commendation Medal with two oak leaf clusters.

Stirling holds a BA degree in Philosophy from Pomona College, an MA degree in Education from Whittier College, and a JD from USC Gould. He is currently working on an EdD at Pepperdine University. He got his start in law at Jeffer Mangels Butler & Mitchell, LLP’s Century City offices and in his first career, he taught literature and language arts at the middle school level.

  

FACULTY IN THE NEWS

National Public Radio
June 2, 2020
Re: Jody David Armour

Jody Armour was interviewed about how protests have changed since the protests following the acquittal of four police officers in 1992 for the Rodney King beating. "My sense of where the protests can go from here, hopefully will go from here, is we’ll have a serious reckoning with the racial injustice that has provoked and continues to provoke these kinds of eruptions," he said. Armour was also quoted about the subject in New York Times, NBC Los Angeles and KCRW Press Play.

RECENT SCHOLARSHIP

Ariela Gross
April, 2020

Ariela Gross was elected as a Fellow of the Society of American Historians, April 30, 2020.

Hannah Garry
April, 2020

Hannah Garry participated as an invited expert on the UCLA-ASIL Task Force round table discussion on "Policy Options for US Engagement with the International Criminal Court.”

Michael Simkovic
April, 2020

Michael Simkovic wrote an opinion piece, “INSIGHT: Less Than 8% of Virus Stimulus Could Go to Health System,” published on Bloomberg Law on April 14, 2020.